a day of mourning and protest in tunisia thousands gathered for the funeral of a slain opposition leader fears of more violence against the backdrop of a general strike that's paralyzed the country. president obama's nominee to head the cia faces cat calls from protesters seemingly gets an easy ride from lawmakers over his controversial targeted assassinations program. budget bickering round two and rifts between main rivals france and the u.k. grow even wider after what's seen as a snub by the french president. international news and comments live from moscow you're watching out. but we start with tunisia

where thousands have gathered for the funeral of a secular opposition leader his assassination has led to chaos in the streets and the crisis in parliament cities nationwide are braced for fresh anti-government protests in two previous days of unrest resulting in fierce clashes between demonstrators and police adding to the turmoil the country has been paralyzed by a general strike. following developments in tennessee. as you can see many people have gathered here today for the funeral sofa chokri belaid one of the most prominent opposition leaders who was killed on wednesday and since stand the situation here on the ground remains very tense and very solid tile and that is definitely threatening that relative stability that we've seen here although in two thousand and eleven revolution we see a lot of people here it's quite a small square but it's packed with people with flags and all of them actually

chanting from time to time and to government slogans many people we have been able to speak to here and come here they say that the leader of a not a party. mr going to shit is personally responsible for this murder well these are very strong accusations actually but we've been hearing that from too many people that we see here today and we have seen here in the last two days in the country actually it's a deja vu it's a mirror situation with what we've seen here that what we saw here two years ago in the last two days following the assassination of took a villa there have been many protests not only in the capital tunis but throughout the country and there have been many who lashes between police and opposition forces and we've heard of at least one police officer who was killed but definitely there have been much more injured people this is a very bad situation here in the country but here's a growing that it may turn even more violent and it will go even further if

there is no solution immediate solution to this is why people are saying that they're preparing for the worst. local journalist to marry in benghazi who's been following developments in tunis since the protests broke out on wednesday says nothing is lucky to quell the demonstrators anger accept a new government. the slogans you can hear right now i down with. we we can and not anyone. my god my prime. minister of interior to resign. i'm mainly asking for the government to go away prime minister. this year oh poor me your government cracked. but it was just used by.

extremists but it's not. that our team with a national whose account of events we heard earlier is also updating you on the latest via twitter one of her latest posts she says the future of the opposition leader was marred by violence after all find out all the details by checking r.t. on the score com. it's. president obama's choice to head the cia has faced a tough a confirmation hearing in the u.s. senate it wasn't the norm

a concern under the spotlight for things like his role the controversial u.s. drone program with session was interrupted several times by protesters only on about things like stop a cia burden. to the use of drones by american for targeted strikes against suspected terrorists who are rights groups claim the program that was created by britain has led to a wide number of civilian deaths one point during the chairman only to be cleared what happened afterwards was far from the expected grilling is going to come explains. back in what most people expected to hear was how does the u.s. government make decisions as to who should be on their kill list and mr brennan would certainly be the most appropriate person to ask because he is known to have been in charge of the kill list and he's known as the architect of the administration's targeted assassinations program so the question of who the drones are targeting was critical and one of the senators asked john brennan whether there should be at least some judicial oversight over those executions by drones and

here's what he said none of those actions or to determine past guilt for those actions that he took the decisions that are made or to take action so that we prevent a future action to protect american lives so the rationale that john brennan gave for not going to court is that the administration is not in the business of. machine individuals but it's in the business of preventing attacks he basically says the us government could execute people who are what they haven't done yet you would expect follow up questions from lawmakers as to how the administration determines the level of threat as these people constitute let's imagine an angry yemeni man who writes in his blog bag he hates america as you can see why died in a drone strike and he wants to take revenge is that enough to justify him being killed by a drone there are so many questions about how the administration decides to put someone on their kill list and yet there was not sneer another grilling on the part

of the senators who gets receive fifty answers prior to the hearing a memo was released which the justice department handed over to congress and according to the memo the government can kill people overseas even without evidence that they are actively plotting against the u.s. the paper states that the u.s. would be able to kill a u.s. citizen or non-citizen overseas went down quote an informed high level of social of the u.s. government determines that target is an imminent threat to them here for also suggest that such decisions would not be subject to judicial review and outlines a broad definition of what constitutes imminent threat everybody expected tough questions on drones but that did not happen john brennan got away with very broad answers like the program is saving lives and that you should take the administration's word for it will drone warfare its consequences and the morality of it all up to debate crosstalk coming there today we hear how drone strikes may be breeding the very tender authorities of seeking to the date. it's quite horrific

in africa but it's getting worse i mean there's a new new drawn be a snow in asia close to mali so that you've got the west of african as well and so it's trucking up so that we're going to have drawn b.s. is all over africa and i'm not sure what a surprise really why are we doing this well isn't it. the most effective recruitment tool for insurgents in the world david what do you think about that drones are an improvement on torture drones are in a movement of a ground war these are the arguments were being given and yet we didn't have a ground war in yemen we might need one eventually after the damage the drone strikes are doing but this is we're being told that this type of murder is better then all of their human rights abuses. the battle of the budget continues in brussels where even leaders are having a second go at hammering out a deal the main faceoff is between the u.k.

and france which are leading rival camps those supporting and the posing cuts to e.u. spending divisions intensified after what's been seen as a snub by france were all known and didn't turn up at a meeting with david cameron auntie's test also the reports from brussels. well the bickering certainly continues between the u.k.'s prime minister david cameron and the french president francois lawn this has been going on even before the summit started the latest drama between the two francois lawndale has been said to have snubbed the british for not attending a meeting that involved david cameron as well as angle of merkel the french president said that he did not get an invitation but it was said that he has been called repeatedly and simply did not answer his phone call this is just part of the drama unfolding on the sidelines david cameron being the loudest voice on the count calling for more belt tightening he wants more budget cuts to the e.u. is a seven year plan whereas france will long does demanding that spending continues and

the excessive cuts not be placed in terms of where the budget stands they've now have a draft proposal in terms of the a bond that they have to negotiate but having a general amount is just the first step they have to figure out how to divide this amount and that is also a point of contention with different countries trying to protect different industries of course in their own national interest and again if they even come up with a deal today there's another step the european parliament to they have to sign off of this if the president of the problem and markets is not very happy if he sees excessive cuts and he said he might not put a signature on it in the end even if they do come up with a deal here at the summit. leaders authority over where to cut this one likes and that's apparently news from any austerity measures the e.u. is reportedly planning to spend more than three million dollars to wage. the blitz on its critics in the social media euro skeptic from the u.k. independence party says a project would violate one of the main principles of european parliament. they

decided that they're going to train in how staff in the run up to the european elections are twenty fourteen train those people to go online to look at facebook twitter and other social media sites and to correct that's their word not mine to correct any misapprehensions that may exist about the european union and i have to say the fact that it's a parliament that is doing this that is using taxpayers' money to do this says a lot about the institutions that all what about parliaments is the person is it's him a chair of parliament he's the speaker in westminster he's the chairman in other parliaments around the world but he and all the rest of a staff are supposed to be neutral they're not supposed to take any political position at all and the fact that the parliament has decided it's going to spend money time and resources doing this shows you that frankly they're no better than a banana republic and this is all the mcgarvie would do or someone like that and i

think many people outside would be shocked by having worked there myself for thirty years i'm not surprised at all they are really really scared they're scared that from north to south to east to west all over the european union citizens are saying we've never voted for this thing to become the united states of europe we've never asked to have the majority of our laws made somewhere else and we want to do something about it so they're scared and they're fighting back. well critics say brussels costly war is about how many across the continent speech this nation can be great to meet protested. the crisis playing education sector. a key document in russia's recent history disappears.

theories that the thief may stand to make. a bill in the u.k. aims to clear the way for private online messages to be monitored by the government . that the proposed measures are taking national security. going up. on the most expensive.

technology innovation. developments from russia. sometimes you see a story so you think you understand it and then. you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you. are welcome to the big picture. is.

welcome back now in the u.k. a document described by some as a snoopers charter will be given another push by the government to the intelligence and security committee said the proposal. the bill is designed to help authorities track online activity of citizens and retrieve personal web data. looks at how such measures could power up a national security. the main area of concern surrounds this the draft communications data bill and proposals in it that critics say see the public left wide open to having their facebook accounts or twitter e-mails read anything that they visit online the websites that they gayety logs by the government now understandably those plans have proven hugely controversial with critics labeling

it the snoop is charter now perhaps more concerning is the latest report by the intelligence and security committee and they'd like to see a nationwide surveillance regime implemented now the government say that they need to do this to catch criminals and stop terrorism that there's lots of the members of the public saying where are safeguards when it comes to what we do online will seek more about this i'm now joined by professor and sneakily to the director studies security and intelligence studies at the university of akron thank you very much for joining us you're in support of the draft communications data bill i heard you describe yourself at a recent talk stunk at the picnic if these fees and these proposals are so unpopular why are the government pushing them through all the time when government is pushing them through because the government realizes that they're needed some thirty million people use the internet to communicate with each other each day in

the united kingdom people in this country fully accept that for more than one hundred years. their telephone conversations are likely to be mine if they're seen as a national security risk if there is a suspicion that a particular person is engaging serious organized crime sex trafficking or terrorism the government can then institute a probe as a member of the public who photo my e-mails for well if you don't want your e-mails . you're not engaged in any kind of illegal activity your emails won't be pro if you want if you want complete privacy don't write any letters to your friends don't speak to them on the telephone and don't send them photographs of yourself in jockeying that you very much for joining us the first thing is the house that is maybe is the time for a big log of thing hate someone is actually watching.

even if they are you can join the online discussion about your case controversial communications bill on our website just head to r.t. dot com to cast your votes what you think the surveillance of people where back to it is will lead to when it see how things are actually stacking up so far today let's see how you're voting i can see the pie chart here yes thirty seven percent of you so far today most voters think scramblers and encrypts will become an ordinary thing almost a third believe that people will reject the practice and fight for their rights eighteen percent today say this will result in people leaving social networks and the smaller proportion sixteen percent think well nothing's going to change at all keep those votes coming.

the georgian parliament has refused to provide a platform for even to listen to president saakashvili is another address in a new side of his waning power hailed in the west as an exemplary democratic rule so very lost popular support and his party was defeated in a parliamentary election all this the result of his crackdown on the opposition and claims of human rights abuses. reports. georgia has performed miracles we moved from being a failed state or be one of the top business destinations in the world while it would be high to be academic freedom according to the world bank i'll be number one fighter with corruption worldwide and many people started to believe in this nation's people started to believe the mockers it was because it is georgia really a beacon of democracy and freedom not from your viewpoint when he's universities rectory refused to build a prayer room he helped organize a ten thousand strong peaceful student rally but it ended with his arrest and

sentence of four and a half yes behind bars. guards could just walk into our cell and start beating us for no reason the even put twenty year old students in wheelchairs and prison one of the inmates went insane because they showed him footage of how his wife was being raped your he thought he was spending his time with murder isn't drug barons instead he found himself among academics architects and right all jailed for having a different opinion to the country's leadership. works as an advisor to the minister of the penitentiary system and used to be classmates with saakashvili she believes the astonishing number of prisoners in georgia during his reign was to a large extent personally driven. he had often been joked out in school he directed his revenge against his former classmates when he became president most of them were either stripped of their businesses are put to prison in his presidency we've had twenty five thousand people in jail. shocking video of

prisoner abuse in georgian jails went viral and effectively diminished the president's party support by more than a half which lost both the election and control over the country it's not yet known whether he will face prosecution over the prison torture allegations but for two hundred political prisoners the change of power meant the chance to walk free. will formally remain as georgia's president until october but he's already been transferred to the prime minister. has already declared a national amnesty of political prisoners but experts say there is socialisation may take several more years. reporting from belief in georgia. what are some other international news in brief for you now this hour a suicide bomber has blown himself up near a security checkpoint in the city of cairo in northern mali no casualties have been reported except for the bomber himself is the first case of such a suicide attack since troops entered the country the north of which was why isn't

this to extremists france now wants u.n. peacekeepers to take over security there as it prepares to end its mission. or car bombs in iraq have reportedly claimed at least thirty one lives as local markets were attacked in the capital and in the nearby city of two blasts hit a baghdad market falling sixteen people fifteen more died after cars exploded. into the targeting busy city areas on fridays has become a widespread terror tactic with insurgents. the ferry carrying around one hundred passengers has sunk in a river in central bank report suggests that more than forty people have been rescued or managed to swim ashore but schools remain missing three accidents are common in the country due to poorly maintained sales and lax regulations. well now that the clock counting down one year the sochi winter olympics has

started taking work at the russian resort city is stepping up the pace organizers say final touches are being made in preparation one of the world's biggest and most prestigious sporting events parties and to farmers in sochi this cover what guests are lucky to find there as well as how the city mark the start of the countdown. after six years of relentless construction i think she's entering the final home straight in terms of getting prepared for these games last night so mark the one year to go down there was a lavish ceremony here at the olympic park there were fireworks there's also a spectacular skating show that took place in the bolshoi that was all very impressive. switched on across russia and if you are a fan tickets have gone on sale now the cheapest ones you can pick up with something like fifteen dollars and if you're rich you fancy a bit of cash you can pick up kids watch the opening ceremony for something like fifteen hundred dollars i have been here for the last few days and have been very impressed with what i've seen most of the sporting venues are now up and running

and that is staggering considering most of them had to be built from scratch there was one area of concern and that was the ski jumping up in the mountains they are slightly behind and also over budget and that still present. a senior member of the russian olympic committee yesterday but overall the message is very positive this is in the daily setting i mean i'm just made from the black sea here people swimming in there just minutes ago i was fifteen degrees these will be the first olympics that will be held in the subtropical climate and if you're coming here to watch in sport i think you will really enjoy it simply because it's so easy to get around the olympic park is extremely compact which means you can walk around all the venues there within about twenty minutes which feasibly means you could watch something not the ice hockey the killing and all this casing events and then if you wanted to see on the second day you could get on a train and within thirty minutes you'd be up in the mountains to watch the alpine events.

and up next how to make a million dollars an hour we talk to an author of a book exposing wall street super profitable schemes and off the break. wealthy british style.

market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines in two counties a report. his first book blamed wall street for looting america but now his new book is a step by step guide on how to become a millionaire member of the nation's one percent joining our team for an exclusive interview is author les leopold thank you very much for sitting down with me once

again thank you for having me your new book is called how to make a million dollars an hour why had funds get away with siphoning off america's wealth what is the purpose of this book what was your motivation for writing it well i wanted to try to get at how it's possible to have such an amazingly skewed income distribution how is it possible in two thousand and ten after the crash for such a hedge fund person to make four point nine billion dollars that year that's over two million dollars an hour how is that possible when i dug into it i found some amazing things that a hedge fund manager can make in one hour with the average american family makes in forty seven years think about the justice in that one hour verses forty

seven years i knew something was wrong there and i had to go find out why you say that hedge fund secrets make it possible to hold down a standing sounds in the space of minutes as long as one is willing to bankrupt their morality for the cash remember well one of the biggest scams that was going on and i'm sure you've heard of these books that talked about the big short all the ways that the smart people that bet against the housing market in the they did so well and weren't they you know geniuses for doing so with they did was they work with these large investment banks to create securities that were designed to fail they were packaging. picks that were designed to fail then they bet on them to fail so they made their billions of dollars by selling a product and then betting on it failing think about this it would be like designing a car that was going to crash and then you took insurance out on the car so that

you could get the benefits of the crash that's what they were doing and i'm not exaggerating the federal government investigated several of these every large bank was involved in this j.p. morgan chase goldman sachs you name it they all did this with hedge funds and they to try to make a killing you maintain that wall street gets too big of a portion of the national income and you say that should be changed but politicians are usually more in sync with the financier's they than they are with the average constituents so how can you realistically expect any type of change well here's where the change going to come from from right now most people believe that if you make a lot of money you must be producing value for society being rich means being successful meaning somehow you're doing something important for society with this book is designed to do is to show that that's not true and that's the first thing we have

to do we have to break apart the notion that these people are quote unquote successful they make a lot of money but when you look at how they make it it's it's impossible to say that they're producing any value for society once we do that it's going to be a little easier to make the case to politicians and the public is as a whole that this is outrageous as a matter of fact i think most americans are ready understand that this is outrageous the problem is that politicians are tied to all that money that comes into their campaigns what the american people now understand is that when you let these people play their game they will take down the economy they will on employ millions upon millions of people without batting an eyelash and that's a volatile. in america i think i think if any politician really had the guts to go after wall street they could ignite the kind of passion that led to occupy wall street people don't like the fact that they're getting ripped off and they know they're being ripped off by wall street you're essentially saying that the u.s.

financial elite the majority of it is effectively robbing the people so do you believe the rising inequality between the rich and poor in america the widening inequality is a match a man made disaster absolutely it's a well put it's exactly that a series of policy changes took place in the late seventy's early eighty's and then all the way through that led directly to the growing gap the growing income distribution gap between the super rich and everybody else and it's precisely the hedge funds that pull up the inequality every look if some thirty something person is making twenty thirty fifty one hundred million dollars a year well then every banker says hey i want to be paid like that to every finance person says i want to be paid like that too and then when the c.e.o.'s of regular companies say wait a second i have got you know twenty thousand employees how come i'm not getting

that sort pulls up the inequality and that's what has to be stopped now a large part of the income now wall street receives is virtual it comes from trading financial instruments it's not backed by commodities how big is that disconnect huge it's huge they've totally forgot they don't even think about whether or not what they do is good for the economy or any or that it produces a product if they can do what they do it and what if it's more profitable for banks and hedge funds to play in this casino good news for them to put the money in the real economy why is it that lending from the large banks is still so meager for businesses across the country is. because they can make more money playing in these casinos as long as we allow these casinos to operate that's where the money will go because they can make more money there and they have some incredibly ingenious schemes for doing it but how long can these type of. shenanigans or imbalances

continue and will we see a possible you know implosion of the global economy and implosion could happen at any time. it will go on as long as as long as we allow it it's a creation of human beings it's not an act of god we deregulated we could reregulate for example if we put a financial transaction tax on every single buying selling of a stock or a derivative a future any financial instrument you begin to suck some of this money out of wall street and put it back into the real economy and what you want to do a shrink wall street down to size you want to eliminate these outrageous salaries. and bonuses you want to eliminate that so people will say you know what maybe i won't call the wall street maybe i'll go work in health care industry or maybe i'll go work in a university or you know research they're smart people but what they're doing is they're using their talents to produce nothing at all and not only is it nothing

but it's it can be a dangerous something that they produce could actually pull down the economy there's a chart that shows wages since world war two in the financial sector in the nonfinancial sector and from world war two up to the mid one nine hundred seventy s. a writer on one thousand nine hundred the two lines are identical other was it didn't matter whether given your skill in education whether you worked on wall street or worked in manufacturing your and about the same that after deregulation the nonfinancial sector goes flat and the wall street's sector goes straight up. how did that happen it happened because we we made it super profitable to work on wall street how do you believe the world. should or can react to the information that disclosing it's not necessarily all you know but you're saying that it's escalating right i think for starters. step one is we've got to get rid of the tax breaks that they use they have hedge funds and private equity firms use this thing

called carried interest where they can claim that their income is really capital gains which is now tax at twenty percent instead of the new rate of thirty nine point six i mean it's outrageous that they get a tax break why they are the richest people on earth getting a tax break why would a billionaire need a tax break and they're not even creating any jobs as far as i can tell so in fact they destroyed a bunch of jobs so that's step one get rid of their tax base but step two is we need to find ways to suck the money out of the financial sector there's too much loose money floating around there in the way to do it is through a financial transaction tax called a robin hood tax europe is several countries in europe now are moving in this direction. a because they need the resources and b they have no patience for this speaking of your hand crisis financial crisis do you believe the u.s. is exposed today you. call one system that's money money moves so

fast now it's all one system i mean the banks that we're talking about they're all global you know that and by the way they're larger than they ever were before and what's the consequence of. consequences are we're very likely to face another crash and this is the killer we're going to bail out these institutions i guess we're going to this is what i'm only going to make one prediction here other than if you stick with me and use these twelve point guide you tube will make a million dollars an hour other than that. i will guarantee that we will this goes on regulated we will face another crash and we will bail out the very institutions were saying we would never be a lot again because there. bigger now that you know the the five largest banks the united states account for fifty two percent of all the banking assets they're bigger than they were before the crash you think we'll let those five go under no way are we going to let those five go under unless we replace the whole banking

system with a government system or what are some of the. steps and points to be able to make a million dollars an hour step one is you have to want to be richer than the pharaohs you can't just settle to be like tiger woods or even oprah or a movie star tom cruise or see you that's not enough that's only seventy eighty million a year you've got to want a billion years so you have to you have to really think of yourself as one of god's chosen elites that you're good you're going to be smarter and richer than anybody that walks face of the earth so you have that step one you have to have to drive the last step which i kind of want to get to is you have to be willing to crush your opponents you have to be able to deflect the center dissenters i got a taste of this i wrote a piece that questioned one of these hedge fund people about then designing bets that would fail and i wrote in my piece that why if this person so smart why are

they engaged in a near criminal conspiracy next thing i know. they threaten to sue me for saying that person was involved in your criminal counts in a criminal conspiracy and i said wait a second is near criminal that means like nearly having sex isn't there a difference between merely having it and the real thing is there a difference between being in a near criminal conspiracy in the real thing but you know they're coming after me with an army of lawyers so their goal was to get that piece removed and you know what they succeeded i couldn't fight them two had hedge fund managers very make a million dollars an hour yeah they did more than one while more than one. and by the way by the time this conversation is done had we gotten our proper million dollars an hour we would have earned. two hundred seventeen thousand dollars so please talk to your boss about getting a raise. i will talk to him about that last leopold thank you very much for your

time thanks so much for having me. lead.

live.

live. the speed. limit. wish. lists glue the government no longer represents the people the people are going to

take such a. leash in the traditional split. the way our economic system currently lives not. live.

when i was done you a bushel terrorists the real toll gates of america's police state coming up obama's adventures in. your search engine selling you life. and america outlaws private property.